The 10 Weirdest Things Celebrities Have Insured

Most of us have some insurance policies, whether it is to cover
unexpected problems or losses with buildings or treasured
possessions or pets.

Some people have a different view on guarding against what might
happen in a worst case scenario and take out policies on some
very strange things.

Your usual web search might not find a company willing to take on
your own unique risk. Many of the unusual cases are taken on by
Lloyd’s of London, which isn’t strictly an insurance company at
all (they do insurance
market tools for insurance professionals!), but a society of
syndicates and individuals that insure many of the world’s
riskiest ventures.

Here are ten of the weirdest we found:

1. Silent film actor Ben
Turpin was the first celebrity to insure a body part
when he took out a twenty five thousand dollar policy that would
pay if his eyes ever uncrossed.

2. Supermodel Heidi Klum had her legs insured for
over two million dollars by Braun when she was employed to
promote their products. These policies, although headline
catching, rarely have to pay out.

3. Space Ship One was the first commercial
venture non-government space plane to leave the earth’s
atmosphere and had a hundred million dollar Lloyd’s liability
policy in 2004. Risks from space don’t only cover travelling –
some policies have been taken out to include possible injury by
falling space debris.

4. Dutch winemaker Ilja
Gort who owns a famous winery in France, insured
his nose for eight million dollars. As a condition of
the policy, Gort isn’t allowed to take part in winter sports,
boxing or, rather more strangely, fire breathing.

5. An Australian cricket player called
Merv Hughes took out a large insurance policy
on his moustache, as he claimed it forms a large
part of his recognisable celebrity image.

6. Paul Hucker insured himself in 2002
against the possible severe physiological trauma
he might be expected to suffer if the England football team were
to be knocked out of that year’s World Cup competition early.

7. Back in 1999 a lady called Mary
Muphy insured herself against immaculate
conception happening to her in the following year. The
policy payout would have been one million pounds, but she could
have probably made a bit more than that if it had actually
happened!

8. More than 30,000 alien abduction
policies have been sold. Again, you could probably make
more than the payout on the chat show circuit; that is if the
military ever let you go!

9. Rich Hall, the well known comedian, had
possibly one of the hardest to prove insurance policies of all –
he insured himself against a permanent loss of
humour for a sum of one million pounds.

10. Perhaps the strangest of all in the
reported case of Nicola Jones, someone else
worried about their popularity and who took out a policy against
herself suddenly becoming ugly. Whether the
potential payout would have been enough to console Ms Jones
following the revelation that she had lost her looks remains
unknown.